What tactics?

[mattjam]

Hi all

Not been back into fishing that long & my favorite local water is a smallish pond stocked with roach, bream, tench, perch & a few carp up to around 22lbs.
I've been fishing mainly for roach, as it keeps my son occupied! (He's 9 & loves the catching rather than the tranquility!)

I've a couple of questions though.
1st, there are large shoals of small roach & hybrids, but what should I be doing to try & get into larger fish rather than the ones that are just a few ounces?

2nd, I've tried to get tench & carp, without having any luck! Does anyone have any ideas or tips?

In general,for roach i'm using maggots on size 18 hook using small regular quantities of groundbait & maggots in around 6' of water.

For tench i've tried inline feeder with small boilies hair rigged on 14/16 hooks, corn, maggots & bread. Had some small bites but nothing definate.

Is it just a case of trial & error or does anyone have any tips to increase the chances of hooking them?

Thanks.

[grantlfc81]

good evening matt,

tench are more early morning/ evening feeders so depending on what time of day you fish you may have a better succes rate at these times, if i was fishing for tench, any time after 5 in the afternoon is a good time to fish.

A really easy way to fish for tench for them would be to fish about an inch over depth on the bottom using a float, a size 14 hook and a nice piece of corn, throwing in a few bits of corn every minute or two.

with bream, they love a good old garden worm on a feeder. ask your local tackle shop about setting up a simple method feeder as this method always brings fantastic results, i would use a size 12 hook for a big worm, or put a bunch of maggots on 4 or 5 and you may pickup a nice carp!

[NJH]

This sounds a lot like a place i used to fish matches on fairly regularly. Try using a high fishmeal content groundbait i used to like pa megabait or original colour sillybait ,im not sure either are still available. Anyway the fishmeal content needs to be high. It seems to deter the smaller roach. Also seemed to be better with a lighter colour, small fish arent as confident over light groundbait.

The next important thing is to make it very inactive by mixing it the day before you want to use it. Mix it as you normally would then wrap it in a carrier bag and fridge it overnight, when you get set up for your days fishing fluff it up a bit and add more water if needed.

Put a good bed of feed down at the start 8 to 10 balls of groundbait and vary the firmness that you make then so squeeze the first couple lightly and the last two quite firm, whatever method you choose. try to avoid the little and often approach with the ground bait you'll end up with a 'column' of feed and get pestered by the small fish. If the swim dies off you can always give it another half dozen balls later.

It may take an hour or more for the fish to arrive but you should hold them for a while and the varied firmness of the groundbait balls breaking down should keep them interested.

For hookbaits try very soft hook pellets (expanders) whole small worms, and red sweetcorn for the tench.
Hope this helps let me know how you get on.

[mattjam]

Thanks for the advice.

Off fishing again tuesday, from around 2.00p.m. until around 9.30p.m. so i'll try for the tench after 5.00 & see how I get on.

Thanks again